Governor hasn’t ruled out reassigning state trooper case to attorney general
Gov. Tim Walz said this week he remains open to reassigning the case against Minnesota State Trooper Ryan Londregan to Attorney General Keith Ellison.
Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty charged Londregan with second degree murder and manslaughter in the shooting of Ricky Cobb II during a traffic stop last summer. The trooper’s attorneys say Moriarty ignored her office’s own expert witness, who said the use of deadly force was justified.
“I’m not a lawyer myself, but as a layman on this, why would you not listen to a use-of-force expert? Why would that not be central to something you would do?” Walz said Monday. “Release documents and let us know.”
A pretrial hearing on the matter is scheduled for Thursday.
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Moriarty’s office issued a statement saying it’s happy to meet with the governor to discuss concerns but will otherwise litigate the case in court.
Walz signaled to reporters that reassigning the case is not a decision he takes lightly.
It would be the second case during Moriarty’s yearlong tenure to be reassigned to the attorney general. Walz reassigned the first — a case against two teenagers charged with killing a 23-year-old woman in her Brooklyn Park apartment — after a plea deal Moriarty negotiated faced backlash from the victim’s family and members of the public.
At the time, Moriarty called the move “unprecedented,” and the Minnesota County Attorneys Association urged the governor not to reassign it.
Moriarty, who was elected to office in 2022, ran on a campaign of police and criminal justice reform. Various law enforcement groups endorsed her opponent, Martha Holton Dimick.